N.J. could use hotels, college dorms as hospitals for coronavirus patients

In an attempt to free up hospital space for patients in need of critical care, New Jersey is considering using hotel rooms as housing for people affected by the coronavirus pandemic, state officials said Tuesday.

New Jersey is expected to call on hotels and college dorm rooms at some point during a crisis that has put hospitals throughout the state at near-full capacity, state Health Commissioner Judy Persichilli said in a media briefing. The pandemic has resulted in 3,675 COVID-19 cases and 44 deaths, according to the state’s latest figures.

“The hotels are in reserve," Persichilli said at Rutgers-Newark during the state’s daily coronavirus briefing. “They would be for symptomatic individuals who have tested positive with moderate symptoms who are living in close quarters at home and should isolate, but perhaps could not because of the living situation. It would also be for our vulnerable populations, primarily the homeless living in shelters that also need to isolate and don’t have a residence to go to.

“Or it could be a patient who gets admitted to the hospital and is under observation, tests positive and needs to isolate for a short period of time after their hospital stay. It would be deemed a safer environment not only for that individual, but for their family or their loved ones.”

Patients staying in hotels or college dorms would be given the same level of care as they would in a hospital, Persichilli said.

“I just may be at a different venue," she said.

New Jersey is following the lead of major U.S. cities that have announced similar measures to relieve the burden on hospitals during the pandemic.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Monday the city will rent more than 1,000 empty hotel rooms, saying “individuals who either have a COVID-19 diagnosis or who are awaiting test results, but who cannot safely return home and do not need hospital care, can be transferred to downtown hotels rented by the City of Chicago."

New York is working with the hospitality industry to possibly convert entire hotels into hospitals for patients without the coronavirus, the city’s emergency management commissioner, Deanne Criswell, told The Wall Street Journal last week.

The decision to use hotels figures to be a financial benefit for the hotel industry, the American Hotel and Lodging Association told NJ Advance Media on Tuesday.

“We expect that (the financial benefit) will be limited because we hope that there’s very few people that need to be hospitalized for this," said Chip Rogers, chief executive of the AHLA. “But this will break down into two areas: for folks who actually need medical care, and then another group of folks who just need to be quarantined."

Rogers estimated 75% of the nearly 11 million hotel workers nationwide have either been furloughed or laid off during the crisis. Before the coronavirus resulted in a shutdown that has essentially stalled travel nationwide, New Jersey had 182,188 jobs supported by the hotel industry, including housekeepers, maintenance workers, front-desk clerks, hospitality staff and supply sellers, according to AHLA statistics.

“It would be helpful for the hotel to have their employees working," Rogers said, "and it would be helpful to the folks who unfortunately have to stay in those hotels because of health conditions. Full-service hotels, you’d still need a staff to prepare food, and that would be easy because those employees aren’t coming in contact with the guests anyway.

“For the rest of the positions, we’re actively in the process of working with the health officials on how do you deliver things like bed sheets and towels? How do you get those basic services to the folks who are there without having the employees each come in contact with them?”

Rogers said some employees have expressed apprehension about working under such conditions.

“It is not an easy problem to conquer,” Rogers said.

Because of the need for hospitals to free up space, the hospitality advocacy group began working with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services last week to create a national database that will list hotels volunteering to help coronavirus patients, Rogers said. The “Hotels of Hope" program, he said, grew to more than 6,500 hotel properties nationwide over the past three days.

Several New Jersey hotels have already offered their residences since the call for temporary hospitals began last week, Persichilli and Rogers said.

Murphy signed executive orders Saturday to shut down non-essential retail businesses in the state, banned social gatherings and instructed people to “quite simply stay at home" as the number of New Jersey coronavirus cases continues to climb. As a result of the shutdown measures, hotels are at less than 10% occupancy, according to Rogers, and that percentage figures to fall with no end of the pandemic in sight.

“Virtually every hotel in the country is facing one or two problems: They just don’t have the occupancy base to remain open so they just close the doors, or some are operating just to leave the lights on," Rogers said. “Both (issues) are resulting in a massive amount of furloughs. We are in the wilderness at this point.

“We really have no idea how quickly (the jobs come back) because we’ve never seen anything like this.”